Wednesday, January 25, 2017

On an Apache reservation in Arizona, a toxic legacy and a mysterious history of chemical spraying

The sound always came first, a low buzz that grew and grew
until it roared through the valley. Then the olive-colored plane
appeared overhead, flying low. In its wake was a thick shower of oily
droplets making a long, slow fall to the forested gullies below.

Kids
on the Apache reservation back then chased the planes over gem-laden
hills, past the flame-yellow salt cedars lining the banks of the Gila
River. If they arrived ahead of the planes, they stood under the
mysterious, oily rain, waiting for rainbows.

“We just played in it, drank the water with it in there, ate
the food we hung out to dry covered in it,” said Mike Stevens, 62.
“Didn’t know what it was.”

The planes were delivering a
chemical cocktail with components similar to Agent Orange, the powerful
herbicide that laid bare the jungles of Vietnam during the 1960s to
allow American warplanes to peer into guerrilla encampments.

The compound, known as Silvex, was deployed as part of a
little-known test effort from 1961 to 1972 to wipe out water-hungry
vegetation on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, part of a larger effort
by the federal government to protect scarce groundwater in the newly
booming city of Phoenix.

The dioxin-laden herbicide was
spread over a population of 10,000 for more than a decade. Now, half a
century later, the federal Environmental Protection Agency
is sending investigators to the reservation this month to find out
exactly what was sprayed and what lingering effects it may have on one
of the nation’s poorest Native American reservations.

“It’s
in our air, our streams, our livestock,” said Charles Vargas, an
activist on the reservation, 90 miles northeast of Phoenix. “This is
fundamentally a crime, perpetrated on our people by the government, and
no one’s ever had to answer for it.”